This Sunday, January 16 at 11:30 AM (ET), soccer fans were going to have the opportunity to see one of the most attractive games of Matchday 22 of the Premier League. None other than the North London Derby between Tottenham and Arsenal, however, this game had to be postponed. Here you can find the reasons that led to the suspension.
A Derby is always interesting to watch. But if it is also between two teams with a long history in the Premier League and that are fighting to enter in the qualifying zone for international competitions, the game becomes even more interesting. Unfortunately, the fans will not be able to enjoy this Derby at least for now.
At this Matchday, the locals arrived in 6th place in the standings with 33 points in 18 games, while the visitors obtained 35 points in 20 games and are in 5th place, which means that they were the last team to qualify for an international tournament (the Europa League, since the first 4 play the UEFA Champions League). With a victory in the Derby, Tottenham would have been able to overtake Arsenal and take that position from them, and that is why the match would be very attractive.
Why was the game postponed?
Arsenal were the ones who called for the suspension of this North London Derby. The “Gunners” would arrive at the game with many absences due to various reasons: suspensions, injuries, players infected with COVID-19 and others playing the African Cup of Nations. For this reason, the Islington team presented the formal request 48 before the match (complying with the regulations) and the Premier decided to grant the benefit.
It should be remembered that Arsenal is one of the English teams (together with Leicester, Crystal Palace and Watford) that loaned the biggest number players to play in the African Cup of Nations. In total there were 4: Thomas Partey (Ghana), Mohamed Elneny (Egypt), Pierre Emerick Aubameyang (Gabon) and Nicolas Pepe (Ivory Coast).
About this decision, Tottenham expressed in a statement: “We are extremely surprised that this application has been approved. We ourselves were disqualified from the European Conference League after a significant number of COVID-19 cases meant we needed to reschedule a fixture and our application to move our Leicester fixture was not approved – only for it to be subsequently postponed when Leicester applied”.
So when will this game be played?
Neither the Premier League nor any of the teams involved have mentioned anything about this yet. Surely in the next few days there will be news, although it is well known by all those who follow the Premier League that several games have been suspended due to outbreaks of COVID-19 in different teams, making rescheduling very difficult.